Obama's gamble?
Yesterday, US President Barack Obama surprised a lot of people when he said, "...I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."
To be blunt, I think that this is an interesting, if potentially risky, political ploy. Keeping in mind that this is an election year, it's safe to say that everything he says and does from now until November is a political ploy, of course. It seems to be aimed squarely at criticism that he's not left-wing enough for the Democratic Party - polls show that support for gay marriage is growing in the US, but that same article suggests that black voters (traditionally a stronghold for the Democratic Party) are less supportive of gay marriage. More recent polling puts black support for gay marriage still somewhere south of 50%.
Given that 96% of black voters cast their ballots for Obama in 2008, there's an open question as to how much this is going to hurt him this year. I don't think people are going to vote for Mitt Romney just because they disagree with Barack Obama on a single issue, regardless of the colour of their skin, but it's entirely possible that some people may just stay home (or leave the ballot blank) rather than vote for a candidate who is espousing an opinion at odds with their personal (and, often, religious) views. Personally, I'd rather wait for hard polling data, rather than trust people who claim to speak for a voting block, but in the same breath say that it's not a voting block, and then also claim the block is going to keep supporting the candidate as a block regardless of his opinion on an issue. But that's just me.
Either way, it's an interesting move. It's obviously not going to attract any hard-right conservatives to vote for him, but that was mostly a lost cause anyway, IMHO. It may be enough to convince "social liberals" who were on the fence to vote for him, as well as to convince the hard-left Democrats that he's still approximately where they want him to be. So, the only question is, how much is it going to hurt his support among black voters? My guess would be that he's already commissioned extensive polling on the subject and already knows exactly how much he's going to gain and lose "to within 1.1%, 19 times out of 20", and he's judged that he's going to gain more than he loses, if he's got political advisors worth the money he's paying them. (It does also give the "family values" conservatives something new to scream about. If nothing else, maybe the fringe elements will finally stop claiming he was actually born in Africa and start claiming he's secretly gay or something.)
On the other hand, if gay marriage became legal at the federal level in the US, that might have a (probably small?) dampening effect on the tourist industry vis-a-vis the gay Americans who come to Canada to get married.
To be blunt, I think that this is an interesting, if potentially risky, political ploy. Keeping in mind that this is an election year, it's safe to say that everything he says and does from now until November is a political ploy, of course. It seems to be aimed squarely at criticism that he's not left-wing enough for the Democratic Party - polls show that support for gay marriage is growing in the US, but that same article suggests that black voters (traditionally a stronghold for the Democratic Party) are less supportive of gay marriage. More recent polling puts black support for gay marriage still somewhere south of 50%.
Given that 96% of black voters cast their ballots for Obama in 2008, there's an open question as to how much this is going to hurt him this year. I don't think people are going to vote for Mitt Romney just because they disagree with Barack Obama on a single issue, regardless of the colour of their skin, but it's entirely possible that some people may just stay home (or leave the ballot blank) rather than vote for a candidate who is espousing an opinion at odds with their personal (and, often, religious) views. Personally, I'd rather wait for hard polling data, rather than trust people who claim to speak for a voting block, but in the same breath say that it's not a voting block, and then also claim the block is going to keep supporting the candidate as a block regardless of his opinion on an issue. But that's just me.
Either way, it's an interesting move. It's obviously not going to attract any hard-right conservatives to vote for him, but that was mostly a lost cause anyway, IMHO. It may be enough to convince "social liberals" who were on the fence to vote for him, as well as to convince the hard-left Democrats that he's still approximately where they want him to be. So, the only question is, how much is it going to hurt his support among black voters? My guess would be that he's already commissioned extensive polling on the subject and already knows exactly how much he's going to gain and lose "to within 1.1%, 19 times out of 20", and he's judged that he's going to gain more than he loses, if he's got political advisors worth the money he's paying them. (It does also give the "family values" conservatives something new to scream about. If nothing else, maybe the fringe elements will finally stop claiming he was actually born in Africa and start claiming he's secretly gay or something.)
On the other hand, if gay marriage became legal at the federal level in the US, that might have a (probably small?) dampening effect on the tourist industry vis-a-vis the gay Americans who come to Canada to get married.